Fallout

Drowning

"Stay down!" The knives entered his hands, one right after the other, agonizingly efficient in slicing through his palms and into the floor. He was stuck. Again. And his father's angry, drunken shadow loomed over him, ready to strike.

"Mom!" Riley called out, trying to scream, but all that came out was a raspy whisper. "Mom! MOM!" He tried again and again until her comforting presence showed up, looking down at him. But she didn't look kind. Nor caring. Certainly not loving.

"Mom! Help me!" He tried to yell through the hoarse whisper. "Mom!"

But her face was cold and stony. And not just that. Her nostrils flared and her lip curled in disgust as she stared down at him like he was rotten roadkill. He wanted to yell for her again, so he could find the Mom who loved him and saved him. The Mom who wanted him.

"Riley." Her voice sounded deadly. He wanted to reach out to her, but his hands were still fixed to the floor. Each blade's serrated edge felt white hot against him. The roaring in his ears was far louder than his screams.

"Just like your father." His Mom said flatly, turning and walking away with icy composure. Riley cried out, but even if he could scream at the top of his lungs, he didn't think she would turn around.

An evil cackle blared loudly. His father appeared overhead, his steel-toed-boot-covered feet raised ominously above his face. Riley couldn't breathe. He couldn't speak. And he couldn't even blink, for fear that the foot would be driven down forcefully in the split-second of darkness.

"She left you, remember? Dumb son of a bitch. You never learn." Keith slammed his foot down, and between the crunch of his obliterated nose and knocked-out teeth, he heard "STAY DOWN!"

But it wasn't Keith. Or his Mom.

It was Brad, laughing evilly at Riley's misery.

_____

"Ri! We're leaving in five!"

He snapped to attention, blinking heavily until his blurry eyes cleared and he could see his reflection in the mirror. Nausea made him slightly dizzy and the weight of panic settled onto his chest securely as he tried to escape the vivid imagery from last evening's night terror.

All of it felt so real. The knives, the stomp, his Mom's turning her back. He supposed that since all of those things had actually happened to him that he was just remembering what he'd felt in the past. That revelation brought him no comfort.

"Riley, get moving kid!" Brad's impatient voice called from the foyer, finally catching his attention. "We don't want to be late on your first day!" Riley's stomach curled in on itself and he unconsciously furled into his standard defensive stance.

Today was his first day of school. His first day at the private high school where Sharon and Brad had enrolled him after Christmas. Riley's first day of school since the classroom meltdown that precipitated his father's arrest and his mother's return to his life.

He didn't want to go.

As much as he'd lied to them when they asked him if he was "ready and excited" to start at a new school, Riley felt guilty for the blatant dishonesty. He wasn't ready to leave his safe cocoon and face a "new life" at a new school. He wasn't excited at the prospect of "making new friends and trying new activities."

Those words were Sharon and Brad's, not his own. Riley didn't want to start at a private school where he was a new student midway through the year. He didn't want to wear the school uniform, though it was just khaki pants and a navy collared shirt with the school crest on the breast pocket. And he didn't want to deal with the awkward questions whenever he came home and his Mom asked about all the friends he made.